Re: Two Radio Questions
This delay became more prominent when stations added the HD Radio subcarrier to their standard FM signal. It takes 8 seconds for the digital encoding + decoding of audio for HD Radio, so stations have to delay their analog audio so that when a receiver flips between digital and analog there is no noticeable time-shift in the programming. The FM RDS (a.k.a. RBDS) data stream that updates your radio display (not the HD Radio data) has far shorter delay, and most stations don’t add a synthetic delay to that RDS data stream. So, you might be seeing what’s next by 8 or so seconds before you begin to hear the next song.
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